Rantlets: Lack of rants, litterbugs and Bob Barr

I haven’t ranted much lately. Most of what I’ve come up with is these Rantlets with (relatively) short thoughts on three or four current topics. Seems like every time I get a good head of steam built up to do a full fledged rant it’s as I’m driving to Joplin, with 6 hours before I turn around and drive the half hour back. Inevitably I turn the radio over to the Dennis Miller show and the King of the Rant proceeds to thoroughly assault the topic in a way that would make my own rant anticlimactic, to me at least. And I’m sorry, Dear Reader, but if the ranting isn’t satisfying to me, I have to work under the assumption that it will be even worse for you.

The Ivy League Conservative brings up the topic of Mexican litterbugs, in a post that is “NOT about illegal immigration.” It seems that the Mexicans running across the desert southwest, and the smugglers bringing them across, just dump their garbage as they go and the US taxpayer pays to clean it up. Sounds to me like another argument in favor of massively expanded LEGAL immigration, to encourage people to cross at checkpoints complete with trash cans and maybe even recycling bins. Funny, but with only a couple of exceptions (language and social services) every problem the the anti-immigrant crowd cite would be solved INSTANTLY by expanding legal immigration and shooting at whatever crosses the border illegally. Of course, that might still involve some cleanup. I just hope those Mexican’s that dumped that garbage don’t get it in their head to join the Army or they may end up with Arlo Guthrie in Group W:

where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father
rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And
they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the
bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest
father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean ‘n’ ugly
‘n’ nasty ‘n’ horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me
and said, “Kid, whad’ya get?” I said, “I didn’t get nothing, I had to pay
$50 and pick up the garbage.” He said, “What were you arrested for, kid?”
And I said, “Littering.” And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I
said, “And creating a nuisance.” And they all came back, shook my hand,
and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing,
father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the
bench.

I got two emails in the last two days that were kind of serendipitous. The first was from a GOP activist worried that we Bilderberg types faithful Republicans get out the vote at the Missouri GOP convention, as “Libertarians…will try [to influnce] the State Convention.” (This was related to the Ron Paul delegate effort, I ranted about previously.) The second email was from Bob Barr, former Bilderberger Republican turned Libertarian, asking for support for his Exploratory Committee and contained this quote from Ronald Wilson Reagan, Republican hero:

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.

I used that in my signature replying to the first letter.

Fortunately any possibility that I might throw away my effort, money or vote on Bob Barr’s effort was foreclosed by this bit later in the letter comparing Hillbama and McCain:

Do they have any real intention of securing our border to stem the flow of millions of illegal aliens into this nation? NO.

Wow. Pick one of the few areas where John McCain has a decidedly pro-liberty stance, in line with Reagan’s conservative philosophy and policy, in agreement with the policy ideas of the current leader of the GOP, in line with the 2000 primary campaign pledges of George W. Bush (that were one of the reasons I supported him) and expect me to bail out based on that. Sorry Bob. Best of luck with getting that Libertarian nomination – may it be precisely as successful as any previous Libertarian Presidential campaign effort.